This post was
inappropriate for Remembrance Day, though it was prompted by the occasion.
Every year, I see the poppies come out. I pin one on my own coat from respect
from the fallen, but I don’t believe in war.
I wonder how many
of the soldiers who fight them do believe in it.
I tried to write
an appropriately respectful piece about conflict on a global scale, the horrors
of two World Wars, the trauma of Afghanistan and the massive damage of ongoing
unrest in the Middle East, but it’s too easy to pontificate from my comfy chair
in western Canada. I can’t speak from experience (for which I am eternally
grateful). None of my loved ones have been sacrificed in service to their
country.
So I watch the
faces of the veterans during Remembrance Day ceremonies and wonder how they
must feel, knowing that the world they fought to improve is spiralling deeper
into despair in spite of their heroic efforts. And now that those who survived
WWII are dwindling in number, we are reminded of the men and women who fought in
Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf, and those on assignment as peacekeepers in
hotbeds of civil conflict everywhere else but here. I’m glad I’m not a soldier,
or that none of my sibs or nieces or nephews chose a military career. Of course
I believe in reverence for those who perish in battle … but on a day when
thousands of refugees are flooding out of Syria because of yet another war (or
is it part of a big, long, never ending one?), I’m starting to think more about
the victims of war than of the heroes who fight them.
It isn’t
working, people. Can’t we just stop?
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